Srinivas Padma: Personal Musings on Life, Growth, and Connections

Silicon Valley (US): Renowned astronaut Sunita Williams, newly elected Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal and controversial fashion designer Anand Jon have been listed among the top 10 Indian American newsmakers in the United States this year. Prominent Hindu chaplain Rajan Zed and teen idol Sanjaya have also made it to the list released by India Currents, a monthly maga zine issued from California which annually names those Americans of Indian origin who make headlines during the calender year. In its list for this year, the magazine has included policy makers, original thinkers, trend setters, record breakers and media sensations. Jindal, 36, hit the headlines for being appointed as the youngest Governor of the US. Williams made it to the magazine's list as she set the record for the longest single space flight while Anand Jon was in news as he was charged with sexually assaulting a number of models who worked for him. Other Indian Americans in the list are Puli...

Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams is all set to return home on June 21 after a record-breaking 194-day space odyssey by a woman with the mission managers giving the green signal. Sunita and six other astronauts, who came on June 10 to fetch her bid farewell to her replacement Clayton Anderson and two Russian cosmonauts on the International Space Station (ISS) before the hatches between their spaceship and the station closed at 6.51 pm on Monday (4.21 am IST on Tuesday). "I'm sad to say goodbye, but that means progress is being made and it's time for the International Space Station to grow a little more," Williams told ground control before the astronauts floated into space shuttle Atlantis that would take them home. Undocking at 10.42 am (8.12 pm IST) on Tuesday, Atlantis is scheduled to touchdown at Kennedy Space Centre, Florida at 1.54 pm (11.24 pm IST) on Thursday, US space agency Nasa said. Sunita had set off from here on December 9 on spa...

Indian American astronaut Sunita Williams and I nternational Space Station commander Mike Lopez-Alegria went on a seven-hour, 55-minute space walk in the first of an unprecedented three outings in nine days. The duo returned to their home in space through the Quest airlock at 4.39 am on Thursday after working on the reconfiguration of the station’s power and cooling systems, US space agency Nasa said. They are scheduled to take their second space walk February 4 and the third February 8. While flight engineer Williams — wearing an all-white suit — reconfigured electrical connections, Lopez-Alegria — in the lead in a suit with red stripes — worked at the “rats’ nest”, an area near the base of the Z1 Truss with numerous fluid and electrical connections. As the space walkers stood by, the ground control retracted the starboard radiator of the P6 Truss. After retraction, they installed six cable cinches and two winch bars to secure the radiator and then installed a shroud over it. William...

Carrying among other things a copy of the Bhagavad Gita, a statue of Lord Ganesh and a packet of samosas, Indian-American astronaut Sunita Williams soared into space on board the space shuttle Discovery toward the International Space Station that would be her new home in the stars for the next six months. Discovery, with six other crew, took off at 8.47 pm EST on Saturday (7.17 am IST Sunday) on a column of fire that briefly dispelled the darkness over the Kennedy Space Centre at Cape Canaveral, Florida. Strong winds had put in doubt Nasa’s first night launch since the Columbia disaster in 2003 which killed another Indian-American astronaut Kalpana Chawla, but the gusts subsided about an hour before. Bad weather postponed an initial launch attempt on Thursday. “Forty-eight hours makes a tremendous difference,” Nasa launch director Mike Leinbach told Discovery’s crew shortly before launch. “The weather is outstanding, the vehicle’s in great shape, so we wish you all good luck, Godspeed ...

Houston: Sunita Williams is all set to become the second woman of Indian origin after Kalpana Chawla to blast off on a space mission and spend six months at the International Space Station where US shuttle Discovery will leave her on completion of a 12-day repair job. Ms Williams, 41, the daughter Deepak and Bonnie Pandya, arrived at the Kennedy Space Centre in Florida for a final stretch of training and preparations for Friday’s shuttle mission STS-116, the first night launch since the 2003 Columbia disaster. The spaceflight is scheduled to lift off at 8:05 on Friday will take along the most rookie crew since 1988 as five of the seven members have never flown in space before. Besides Ms Williams, the crew includes mission commander Mark Polansky, pilot William Oefelein, mission specialists Joan Higginbotham; Nicholas Patrick; lead spacewalker Bob Curbeam; and the European Space Agency’s Describing as having most culturally diverse space shuttle crew, Ms Williams said she was aware of ...